Commons 1790-1820

Since the bitter struggle of 1765 Tiverton had been under the joint control of Nathaniel Ryder, 1st Baron Harrowby, and his ally Sir John Duntze, an Exeter merchant and banker. The Ryders had no property in Tiverton, but their interest was the stronger of the two. It dated from the 1730s and was founded on and sustained by the provision of civil, military and ecclesiastical patronage for members of the corporation and their families and by loans and gifts to local tradesmen, especially during the wartime dislocation of the woollen trade.

Tavistock remained completely under the control of the Whig dukes of Bedford, who returned members of their family and political friends.

Plympton remained under the joint control of the 1st (d.1795) and 2nd Earls of Mount Edgcumbe, successively recorders of the borough, and the Treby family, its largest property owners, whose head from 1783 to 1832 was Paul Treby Treby (formerly Ourry) of Goodamoor. Between them they dominated the corporation, which enjoyed the power of creating freemen, most of whom were non-resident gentry. Both patrons sold their seats.

In 1792 Oldfield described Plymouth as an Admiralty borough; in 1816 as under the patronage of the Prince Regent.Hist. Boroughs. i. 236; Rep. Hist. iii. 290. Neither description does justice to the complex electoral history of Plymouth in this period, embracing as it does a number of confusing episodes which the available material does not fully explain.

In 1784 the combined interests of the two largest property owners at Okehampton, the 5th Duke of Bedford and his fellow Whig the 2nd Earl Spencer, were temporarily overturned by the treachery of Bedford’s local agent, John ‘Esquire’ Luxmoore of Witherdon, who secured the return of himself and a friend. Luxmoore’s cousin and rival, John Luxmoore of Fair Place, who was Spencer’s agent, had no part in the rebellion and in 1785 the peers’ defeated candidates were seated on petition.

Honiton had a reputation for shameless venality and was the ruin of at least three of its Members in this period. In 1790 the strongest single interest was that of Sir George Yonge, secretary at war in Pitt’s administration, whose family’s parliamentary connexion with the borough, based on their neighbouring property but sustained by money, went back for over a century.

Exeter’s period of high commercial prosperity ended with the decline of the Devon cloth industry from the mid 18th century. Largely untouched by the industrial revolution, it retained the traditional life and social structure of a cathedral city and provincial capital, rooted in rural society.See W. G. Hoskins, Industry, Trade and People in Exeter, 1688-1800 and R. Newton, Victorian Exeter . As a constituency it was open but expensive.

Rose’s comment on Dartmouth in 1810, that ‘the interest of the borough is exclusively in the Holdsworth family’,Add. 49185, f. 55. would have been applicable at any time between 1722 and 1832. Although their influence, based on control of the corporation and thereby of the election of freemen, had generally been exercised in the 18th century on behalf of successive governments, with the right of recommendation to local customs posts and offices connected with the castle as the quid pro quo, the choice of Members rested with them and not with the Treasury.

Bere Alston, a village of about 40 houses, was completely under the control of Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley, the second son of the 1st Duke of Northumberland, on whose death in 1786 he had inherited the lordship of the manor. Beaumont was probably a paying guest. Beverley successively replaced the Mitford brothers, his second cousins, with his first and fourth sons, bringing in the former as soon as he came of age in 1799, and the latter, aged 22, in 1806.

In 1816 Oldfield wrote of Barnstaple: ‘If any one borough in the country is more corrupt than another it is this. The expenses of a candidate at a contested election here, is from ten to thirteen thousand pounds.’Rep. Hist. iii. 300. While this was a gross exaggeration, there can be no doubt that money was the key to the borough and that corruption grew steadily worse during this period.